July 21, 2008

Could be that the solution is all about the pectin.* It came to me while I was making this zucchini and lemon tart, a Madeleine Kamman recipe from the delightful When French Women Cook. And I will provide you with that very recipe after I have secured your attention for my zucchini idea. Which is entirely untested by me, except in the case of this lone tart. But a big advantage of blog writing (for the writer, not the reader) is that you don't need credentials, or a reliable sample of any kind to hold forth.

The season of zucchini overdose is upon us, whether we suffer from lopsided CSA boxes or gardening neighbors bearing gifts of giant, horsey squashes they cannot bring themselves to consume. Everywhere we read recipes for zucchini breads and zucchini pancakes, zucchini carpaccio-desperate to use it up.

My position on zucchini is not that I don't like it, but more that I could happily live without it, if I weren't so averse to waste.. (Except for those paper-thin, breaded, fried ribbons served with lemon wedges in neighborhood Italian-American restaurants- which I love without reserve, even if some are not so wafer thin, utterly crispy and boiling hot as one might wish..) Mostly, to my mind, zucchini is just kind of boring, and that is IMHO, because it tastes like green water. It's squash nature is diluted by its water content and it exudes slush like crazy when you cook it, so you have to use various techniques- like grating it and squeezing it, or combining it with say, eggplant, which absorbs a lot of water, or sticking it in a bread or cake, where it tastes like something else entirely..

This problem has been discussed quite a bit, and now that I think on it, perhaps the following thought has been booted about too. But I haven't seen it (except in MK's little recipe note), so I'm going to tell you about it from my own viewpoint, here in the kitchen, looking at my tart. Which is basically a dessert. Delicious, but not what a person wants to do with all of her zucchini lode. Or load. What I intend to do, is to try the method with a savory application or two, to see if it will work. I will keep you posted.

So the deal, in this recipe, and according to MK, is that you cook the sliced zucchini with lemon juice and caraway seeds and a little sugar, which ingredients she says, "bring out the pectin" in the zucchini, so that the exuded water magically thickens and concentrates into a syrup. Which it does. The syrup tastes intensely of the squash, and, thanks to the lemon juice- is not really all that disturbingly sweet. And it is no way excessively damp or soggy. In this recipe, though,it is then baked into quite a sweet lemon custard tart- clearly a dessert.

But here's my idea: First, the caraway is a diversion, not involved in the chemistry of the thing, I'm sure. Lemon has its own high pectin content, sugar promotes syryp-ness, jelling, etc. So the solution to the tasteless, watery zucchini problem may be to cook the lemon and zukes with just enough sugar to make this happen, without turning the whole thing into some kind of fruit preserve. It is my belief that the answer to this is carmelized onions and/or garlic,
both of which taste great with summer squash, as does lemon. And with that in mind, I intend to work on a savory zucchini tart and/or pizza thing, which I hope will be extra flavorful, savory rather than sweet, and not the least bit soggy. Stay tuned, if you are interested.I promise to reveal all, even if it turns out to be awful.

In the interim, you might like to try this recipe from the French Alps, as marginally adapted by, well, me. I think it is really cool, and I like the caraway. It's one of those slightly odd provincial French recipes that kind of grows on you-like that pie from Provence with the chard and raisins? It seems a tad funky at first, but then you just kind of want to keep eating more, and could possibly become addicted. The custard may look like it's curdling before it's cooked, but it will be okay after baking.

You need:
A 9 inch pan (preferably a white porcelain quiche type pan), lined with a butter based pie dough of your choice
3 small or one large zucchini
1 Tbsp butter (I actually used a local seasonal "pasture" butter which is lightly salted, and skipped the salt. Because this butter is delicious, and only available in the summer.)
2 Tbsps sugar
pinch salt
1/3 tsp caraway seeds
juice 1/2 lemon
tsp grated lemon peel
lemon custard mixture

Preheat oven to 375F. Melt the butter, and slice the zucchini thinly. If using the large kind, cut it into quarters first. Add the zucchini to the melted butter,. Add the rest of the ingredients, and stir, cooking until the zucchini is not so green, and begins to look slightly transparent, and the liquid in the pan is thick and syrupy. Cool completely, then line the bottom of the tart with the cooked zucchini, and tuck it in the oven for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, make the lemon custard.

Lemon custard:
Cream 6 Tbsps butter and 2/3 cup of sugar until light. Add the juice of 2 lemons, 2 eggs, 2 yolks, a pinch of salt and a glug of rum. Mix well, then fold in 2 Tbsps of flour and the finely grated zest of one of the lemons. Even mixed well, it looks funny, but never mind.

Once the partially filled tart has cooked for 20 minutes, carefully pour in the custard and cook for about 25 minutes more, or until the custard has set, with some lovely brown spots.

Serve warm or room temperature, or even chilled, in very thin slices as it is very rich, like an eccentric lemon curd.

*It could also be that I'm a bit obsessive about pectin and sugar, having just spent a fair amount of time learning about jams and jellies in a 3 day class. Or both.

October 20, 2007

There are dishes I'm always playing with, and then there are a few about which I am a total, heels-dug-in reactionary. Tarte Tatin at my house has not changed since I first got it figured out, thanks to Patricia Wells. I have no plans to chill out on this issue in the future. I do not claim authenticity, but rather hold this of no consequence, because it is all about the charming and tasty end product. I'd be glad to try your tatin, your way, at your house. I've even stuck a fork into a strange, deconstructed restaurant version, featuring a towering stack of pastry squares and poached apple slices in a cage of spun caramel. I probably couldn't recreate the latter if I tried, but anyhow, I emphatically don't want to. I am willing to try all sorts of upside down fruit pastries using other techniques, but this is my one and only apple tatin.

Sometimes my tatin looks pristine and elegant, sometimes ordinary, or even a little dumpy, but it always and reliably delicious. It is comforting food in the extreme, but a treat, rather than everyday fare. It ain't no meatloaf, though it is cosy enough to follow one for dessert. I would rather eat it than the classiest of pastry chef cakes. There is a bit of bother, but no extraordinary skills are needed; it makes the house smell delicious. I'm pretty sure that if someone made it for me, I'd love them forever. Or, for awhile, conditionally at least. This pie, without more, certainly won't make you any enemies.

Though I am not a fan of the Golden Delicious apple for eating out of hand (mealy, icky), I believe it is the perfect apple for this tart. I will not be moved from this position. Should you wish to make this recipe with another apple (and P. Wells herself does so), I will not be responsible. (I will, however, interrupt this screed briefly to advise you that if you do use a different apple, you must use all apples of the same sort, and preferably of more or less the same size. Please believe this, it is all true. In this way, as in several others, the Tarte Tatin differs from a classic American apple pie. If you were making an American As Apple type pie, a mixture of various apples would be, as you probably know, a fine plan. End of sub-screed.)

But I hope I have persuaded you to go with the Golden D, because in cooking, especially in cooking this way, it is transformed-sweet, slightly spicy, soft- yet holding its shape. You will need 8 or 9 of them, 10 ounces of unsalted butter, and 2/3 of a cup of vanilla sugar, or regular sugar and a tablespoon of vanilla. Also, you will need a 10" round of pastry, short or puff, rolled, trimmed and sitting in the fridge nice and flat. You will also need a well-seasoned 9" cast iron pan or other reliably unsticky, heavy pan. An actual tarte tatin pan-copper, with little ears on either side for turning would be splendid. Santa has yet to turn up with one for me, so I use the cast iron. Get out the bulb baster, too.

At some point, you should preheat your oven to 425F. You needn't do this at once, because you are going to cook the apples for at least an hour before the tart goes into the oven. So. Spread the sugar evenly in the bottom of the pan. Cut the butter in thin slices, and distribute them to cover the bottom of the pan, in one layer. Sprinkle with the vanilla, if you are using plain sugar.

Now peel, halve and core your apples. Set them in the pan, with the outside rounded part against the side of the pan, on edge. Once you have closed the circle, make a second circle of halves inside, facing the same way, also on edge, In the space in the center, place one half, curved outside downwards. As you cook these apples on top of the stove, they will shrink, and begin to slide into place. You can nudge them towards their final positions, from time to time, as you cook them, for about an hour, basting frequently, until they are entirely soft and ready to eat. Keep in mind that when they go in the oven, you want them all with the closed curved side down (cause that will be the top in the end), packed tight.
If you make this tart often, you will notice that as the juiciness of the apple varies, the carmel syrup may be more or less thick, or runny. It is best quite thick, so if you see it more liquid than usual, you can sprinkle some more sugar over in the last 15 minutes or so on the stove. As you baste, it will melt into the sauce, and thicken it. Don't do this the first time though- the pastry absorbs some liquid, and you won't be able to judge that until you've seen the whole process a few times. There have to be some advantages with experience, after all. But don't worry- it will be super good even if it is swimming in overly-juicy, messy liquid.

You can more-or-less see the starting arrangement in the lower photo, though I cannot take a decent indoor food picture to save my life. Once the apples are perfectly cooked and arranged in place, take the pastry from the oven and set it over the apples, tucking in the parts that extend beyond the pan rim. Put it in the oven, on a cookie sheet or other drip catcher, and cook 35-40 minutes, or until the pastry is done. Remove from oven and place a large serving platter over the top of the pan. Over the sink, and protecting your hands well, flip the tart over, onto the serving plate. Remove pan. Carefully (they are soft), replace any errant apples, and mop up any particularly goopy, out of place wetness with a damp paper towel. Serve warm or cooled, preferably the same day, but the leftovers, if any are not to be sneezed at.

August 31, 2007

I was brought up to believe that whining was the 8th deadly sin, and the only one which was reliably punished in this lifetime. Apparently, mother was not always 100%, absolutely right. Sometimes a person is very lucky, and is rewarded, despite shameless self-centered complaining. That would be me.

I was intrigued by June's recipe for a "lemon posset", wherein cream is magically thickened and mutates into custardy goodness with the addition of lemon juice, and no eggs whatsoever. I speculated (well, actually, sniveled) that the clotted cream called for was unavailable in the Greater Pittsburgh Area, and that the recipe probably wouldn't work with the more ordinary stuff I can find.

Shortly thereafter, I received a tidy little container of real clotted cream in the mail (!) from June, who I cannot thank enough. It was gorgeous, and traveled beautifully, probably as a result of the nearly unfathomable extent of the butterfat which is its primary reason for being. Wow.

After a few sneaked samples, I made the recipe and it's so cool. It works like a charm and the posset (which resembles a lemon curd that died and went to heaven) thickens up nicely.With this lot, I prebaked two little tartlet shells (ordinary pie crust dough), and layered the posset with some raspberries- glazed with a little melted jam, and shared with my friend, I., who came to dinner, and approved.

I really will have to try this again with some ordinary local cream, to see if it translates at all. It couldn't possibly be as gorgeous, but perhaps it will still be nice. I love magic tricks with food.

March 31, 2007

The Pantry Tart. "No better than she should be", and loitering in the kitchen? Funny vintage, huffy names, for scolding and libeling. No fun at the time for the girls, I'm sure.... Still, I'm particularly attached to "Saucy Baggage", which I think should be the name of a luggage company, if it isn't already.

But it's not about my own, presently less than saucy self, or anyone else. It's about my supper. Still mostly stuck indoors with The Improving Foot, I've been making use of what's already on the pantry shelves, and in the fridge. I am, however, also cheating, because this whole meal started with some asparagus recently delivered by a kindly friend.

I realized that the pantry, which I've been depleting, still contained the ingredients for Asparagus with Morels, and I was going to do that for supper. But, after several days of very limited kichen time, and not a few meals of cold cereal, I had a really nice dinner last night. There was a car ride to the house of friends, chili, excellent guacamole, cute little baby tacos, and actual warm-from-the-oven homemade apple pie with ice cream (!). I'm feeling like I sure do want those real meals again, enough to do something about it. So I thought I'd kind of expand on that tasty asparagus recipe, and make a supper tart of it, to have with the remains of the arugula.

Rather than just referring to that recipe and adding on, I'm going to put the whole thing down here, so as to be less confusing, should you actually want to make it. But is is , fundamentally, just an adaptation of the Paula Wolfert original, linked above.

Soak the morels in 3/4 cup warm water, mixed with 1/4 cup milk for about 30 minutes. Rinse the morels, but save the soaking liquid. Put the morels in a smallish pan, and strain the liquid through a paper coffee filter, or yogurt cheese filter, into the pan. Don't skip this step- you'll be amazed at the amount of dust!

Simmer in the pan until almost all the liquid is absorbed, then add the broth, butter and mustard, salt and pepper.Simmer 5 minutes, and add 1/3 cup of the cream. Take off the heat and set aside for about an hour. Much of the liquid will absorb.

In the broth, cook the leek until soft. Drain.

Preheat oven to 425F. Line a false bottomed tart pan 9-10" round or square with the pie dough, fill with
beans or pieweights and prebake on a cookie sheet for 10-15 minutes. Sprinkle the bottom of the tart shell with breadcrumbs, and arrange on the shell the asparagus, the drained leeks and the morels, which you have also drained, reserving any liquid.

Mix the morel liquid well with the rest of the cream and the eggs,and some nutmeg, and pour over all, just to almost the top of the shell.This should be about the right amount. Grate parm over all, and sprinkle with some more breadcrumbs. Put in oven, which you immediately turn down to 350F. This will take about 40 minutes, but check it sooner!

I find when cooking a filled tart with a puff pastry crust, it is nicer if after I extract it from the tart pan, I set it on a piece of foil, and give it another 10 minutes in a hot (425-450F) oven. Makes the bottom crisp, instead of gooey. If you are going to do this, of course, you should remove the tart from the first baking when it's a little underdone- custard just set.

You can eat the tart hot, but personally, I think it tastes best lukewarm. and leftovers make a swell lunch. If you are planning on consuming your tart piecemeal, you might want to do the bottom crust browning on each portion separately, shortly before serving. Or not.

March 18, 2007

I'm not a bit Irish myself. However, the late spouse was pretty much entirely Irish-American, and left the legacy of an Irish surname (I kept my own for the middle name I never had) and a 50% Irish child. Moreover, two of my best friends are seriously Irish. This last item has let me in on an annual St. Patrick's Day feast for quite a few years now. I love this stuff. E. makes wonderful corned beef and cabbage, with lots of yummy veg and potatoes-all briny, and some dandy soda bread to go with. There's mustard, and it's just so fine.

I said I'd bring a dessert, but when I went looking for a specifically Irish dessert, as opposed to a dessert from the British Isles in general, I came up a bit short. There are cakes made with Guinness, but I hadn't any on hand. A lot of the Irish cookbooks at the library, and websites with recipes, mention treacle tarts, which I always thought of as English, or, more recently, fictionally and specifically, as of Hogwarts. But the treacle tart choice did meet with some validation from prospective diners, so I went with it. Tangentially Irish, like yrs. truly.

If I make this again, I will use a loose-bottomed tart pan, rather than the pyrex pie pan, because the tart is a thin one- and a good thing too, as it is very sweet. Rather like a pecan pie, without the nuts-for fellow North Americans. I used the recipe from the BBC website, and sprinkled a little bit of sanding sugar over the top in orange to match the filling. Ack-orange!, on St. Patrick's Day. I don't think anyone noticed. Anyhow, the pie pan is green.

October 06, 2006

This slightly gussied-up version of the simple classic is from Dorie Greenspan's Paris Sweets, a collection of wonderful recipes the author collected from famous parisian patisseries. I love this cookbook, and Ms. Greenspan, because both are not only inspired, but entirely reliable. My copy is ratty and stained, due to serious use. Often, in the middle of one of Ms. Greenspan's recipes, there will be a description of what things should look like at that point, cautions on pitfalls to avoid, or timely reassurances when you wonder if you've made a mistake. She can do this, because she has clearly, herself, made all these recipes- and not only once.

You can be confident that all her recipes, here and elsewhere, are properly tested and proof-read, and this is, sadly, not all that common. Many cookbooks have recipes which sound wonderful, but are horribly disappointing in the execution. How often have you tried a good-sounding recipe from a newspaper which just didn't work, and wondered if someone just made it up, and wrote it down, without ever trying it? Probably, to be truly useful, a cookbook review should be written by someone who has tried a good portion of the recipes. I guess this is not generally practical for most print reviewers. Which is why I've taken to looking up cookbooks in blogs I trust, when I'm thinking of buying one.

I often consult Paris Sweets when I want to make a company dessert. Tonight, we're having shrimp and corn chowder, salad, and biscuits for dinner. I had an unbaked tart shell sitting in my favorite little square pan, and about 12 oz. of frozen, organic sour pie cherries. This variant clafoutis used both and sounded like a good candidate. I've made claufoutis before, usually in a skillet- more like a big pancake or cake, finished in the oven. This one, from Patisserie Mulot, is literally "tarted up", in that it is baked in a pastry shell. This makes it possible to have a softer, more custardy filling, since the pastry gives it form.

The only thing I did differently from the Paris Sweets recipe is a little trick I learned from Paula Wolfert's clafouti recipe from The Cooking of Southwest France-a simpler recipe I'm more likely to make on the spur of the moment. (Not that this one is in any way complex-except for doing the pastry.) When you are baking with frozen cherries, if you put a few spoonsful of the sugar, taken from the sugar in your recipe, into a plasic freezer bag with the frozen cherries, shake it up well, and put it back in the freezer for a few hours, this prevents the cherries from bleeding into custard or dough, or whatever you are making. Also in aid of the non-bleeding thing, I set the cherries on the partly baked shell, and poured the custard over-rather than mixing them into the custard.

note:it is actually traditional to leave the pits in for flavor, and this works, but nearly everyone complains that it is too much trouble to eat this way. I like it, but I don't think anyone else I know does- so I don't try it on any more

Preheat oven to 400F. Put partially baked tart shell on a cookie sheet lined with parchment. Set the cherries on the shell in a single layer, distributing them randomly, but more or less evenly. Beat eggs well with sugar and vanilla. Add cream and mix thoroughly. Do not overbeat,at this point, or you will add too much air and volume. Pour over cherries. Bake about 30 minutes, until custard is set. It should not jiggle-even in the middle. Cool a bit, and remove from tart pan. Serve slightly warm, or at room temperature.

By the way, if you search Toast with my little google device, over on the left side there, for "Paris Sweets" you will find several other recipes from this very nice book.

August 28, 2006

It was just too late in the year for me to find sour cherries and make a proper cherry pie. That's a thing I've never done, and obviously I've been missing something major. I'll just have to wait until next summer. In the meantime though, I had a bunch of very nice dark sweet cherries (normal round ones- it's the tart that's square), and was looking to make some kind of cherry pie. This tart is (pretty freely) adapted from the Cafe Boulud Cookbook. I liked idea of the milk chocolate, which Boulud said he used so that the "mild taste" of the cherries wouldn't be overwhelmed. I hadn't thought of cherries as "mild", but on reflection, he's right.

Anyway, I'm very fond of milk chocolate, though it is not so fashionable in the food world right now as the deep, dark, high percentage cacoa kind. I got some Lindt extra creamy milk chocolate for this, found it just a tad too milky-mild, and threw in a bit of the darker (also Lindt, "Excellence") for a bit of oomph. The original recipe calls for ruby port, but I went with the maraschino liquor syrup I already had, taken from my homemade maraschino cherries in Luxardo liquor. You can do the cherries in 2 cups of ruby port, and reduce the syrup later, to serve with your tart.

The pie crust recipe makes two 9" tart shells, but I had a hankering to use my new square tart pan, which is a bit bigger- about 10" square. If you are making two smaller round tarts instead- you will need half again as much filling- so adjust your ingredients accordingly. Be forewarned- though the cherries come through nicely, this is primarily a chocolate tart, like a fancy chocolate pudding, in a chocolate crust. Also, I'm not kidding when I say to dry the poached cherries carefully.I was not careful enough about this, hence the little round craters on the surface, not so cunningly disguised by the sifted cocoa.

In any event- this is a very tasty item, but I wish it was a bit prettier. The chocolate crust is particularly good, and was very easy to roll out and manoever. I'm mulling over using it with other fillings-I'm thinking something with hazelnuts, and a bit salty? We'll see. The syrup is delicious...and not excessively sweet. It would be good in plain soda, Italian style-or a person could make a very over the-top cherry coke.

This is how you do the crust, in a stand mixer.

First, mix one softened stick of butter and one cup of powdered sugar. Then add 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/3 cup of powdered cocoa, and a large egg, beating on slow after each addition, until just mixed. As soon as the dough gathers together, remove it, wrap it, and chill it thoroughly. It can be frozen now if you like, and you can defrost it and proceed later. Otherwise, about 2 hours in the fridge will suffice. Roll the dough out between two sheets of waxed paper, which is easier to handle than plastic wrap. Fit it in a loose bottomed, 10" square tart pan, and blind bake it at 350F, with pie weights, for 15 minutes. Cool. Remove weights.

I made the syrup with half a scraped vanilla bean, the juice of an orange, and the maraschino syrup (maraschino liquor and sugar, saved from a pint jar of my homemade maraschino cherries (the cherries having been eaten up long ago.) I brought this to a boil, added 3/4 pound of sweet black cherries-halved and pitted, and returned to the boil. I turned the heat off at once, leaving the cherries to soak, while I made the chocolate custard.

In a 4 cup pyrex measuring cup, I put 1 1/2 cups of cream, and 7 oz. of good chocolate, broken up. I mictowaved it for a minute, whisked it until smooth with a baby whisk, and them whisked in 3 medium eggs, one at a time.

To put it all together for baking, I set the crust, in its pan, on a baking sheet, and preheated the oven to 320F. I strained the cherries, reserving the liquid, and dried them (insufficiently, it turned out) with paper towels. Then, I set the cherries in a single layer in the crust, poured the chocolate custard over them, and baked the lot for 40 minutes, until just set all over. Once it had cooled-I chilled it in the fridge, and it got quite candy-like.

To make the syrup, I boiled the liquid down until it was pleasantly gooey, being careful not to burn it. I thought thie tart was good cold, with syrup on the bottom, and sifted cocoa over all. It is very fudgy cold-if you want it more puddingy, room temperature would be better.

Milk chocolate and cherries do go well together-and I like that crust-tasty and tender. It's not particularly flaky, but I don't know a chocolate crust that is.

July 28, 2006

I am not much of a one for excessive fooling around with fruit pies..mostly, I like them straight up, with maybe a ghost of one spice. This one is an exception, what with the cream and so on, but I think I may actually prefer it to ordinary peach pie, when it's made in optimal circumstances. As was not the case here, sorry to report. And not that I would call any homemade peach pie "ordinary".

Of course, if you have really splendid , perfect tree ripened peaches, you are not going to be all crazy and cook them in a pie, or even refrigerate them. You'll want to have them warm, ripe and plain, maybe served with a little knife to slice them, or just slurped up whole, dripping down your chin. Unless, of course, you are fortunate enough to have a peach tree of your own. Then, once you are totally replete , you will start wanting to be doing stuff to them. I don't have a peach tree, but I find that commercial peaches, of the sort that are picked unripe, can make admirable pies. Especially the white fleshed ones, which taste sort of winey, or floral to me.

Since I had company for dinner two nights in a row, I thought it would be best to make something or other ahead-and assembled my pie early. This is my first time freezing a homemade pie, so of course I picked something with a custard that has to be added just before serving, and a top crust, and then complicated matters by making it in a pyrex pan.

It seemed, after a brief survey, that most folks think it is better to freeze a pie before baking it, and to bake it without defrosting. Hence, a metal pie pan is in order, since a pyrex pan is not going to survive a trip direct from the freezer to a 450F oven. Whoops. This bit of logic did not surface until my pie was frozen, so I adapted the whole business to accomodate my little faux pas. I put the pie, from the freezer, into a cold oven, and let the oven and pie heat to 450F together.

I did realize from the start that freezing the cream and egg yolk was not a plan. So before I fitted the top crust on, I cut two big triangular vents on top, for pouring the raw custard mix in later. I did the glazing right before baking, too. I made this particular pie earlier this week, and wrapped it up well before freezing.

I used my usual two crust recipe. I added a bit more cornstarch to the peaches than usual, due to the freezing and custard. The bottom crust was sprinkled with dried breadcrumbs as an extra absorption anti-stodge barrier. I filled the pie with 8 largish peeled, thinly sliced white peaches, 1/2 cup sugar, 3 tbsps cornstarch and a wee bit of freshly grated nutmeg and a pinch of cinnamon. It was dotted with butter,covered with the aforementioned top-crust-with-big-triangle-cut-outs, and pinched before freezing.

When I was ready to bake, I mixed 3/4 cup of cream well with one egg yolk, and poured it in the triangular holes. Egg glaze and sparkly sugar sprinkles (corny-but I'm addicted) and then it went into a cold oven, on a cookie pan, set to 450F. Once the oven came up to temperature, I gave it 20 minutes at 450F, then turned it down to 350F. If you make a pie like this, it will take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and 15 to finish off.

Of course, you've got to keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't get over brown, If it is browning too fast, you can cover the darker areas with foil. Also of course you don't want to burn it... but an undercooked pie is a disgrace and a disappointment. Cute thing about this one is, you can poke a skewer through the triangles to make sure the peaches are all soft before you take it out. Very handy.

I strongly recommend against the starting in a cold oven, desperation ploy. Ew. The bottom crust was way soggy, and now I don't know how much to attribute to the freezing process, and how much to this mistake. I guess I am going to have to try another frozen pie to see if the option is usable for me.

But hey-have some fun with a pie. You can always run whatever cooling device you have against the oven, and waste your money in a worthy cause. I do it with the air conditioner now, but I did it with a big old fan before I had the high tech cooler devices-once in a while. Because when can you have a real peach pie but summer?

July 08, 2006

It takes one hell of a bakery to produce anything approaching the goodness of the lamest homemade pie. Why this is I do not know. Many good bakeries produce excellent flat tarts, and wonderful cakes, but a regular old American pie from the same place is often a sad thing. Some diners and restaurants have excellent pies-so what is the story? It may be partially a question of fresh-from-the -oven-ness, but that can't be the whole deal, since homemade pie is also better in its leftover form.

I suspect it has to do with the fact that a really good pie is generally not perfect-looking. Crusts which are underhandled are flakier and better than those without flaw, which have been manhandled into perfection. Probably bakeries have found that their customers don't want stuff that looks imperfect- they think there's something wrong with it. Even my pie-making idols-ladies of my mother's generation who were practised, slick makers of zillions of delicious homemade pies made pies clearly not the work of a machine. Their pies looked tons more skillful than anything I turn out, but they were hand work, and didn't hide it.

It's nice that there are luxuries so easily available to anyone not so poor as to be lacking decent food and shelter, which are virtually unknown to folks who never do any of their own housework. Like line-dried-in the-sun sheets, for another example. But I'm wandering off topic again.

When I say this is my favorite pie, I mean my favorite American style, pyrex pie plate kind of pie. It would be hard to decide between this little number and a lemon tart or tarte tatin. It is even pretty hard to relegate cherry, rhubarb, blackberry and the other lovelies to lesser spots in line. I just love pie. Way more than cakes, or cookies, or even ice cream, they are splendiforous. A nectarine or peach pie with blueberries is gorgeous and wildly aromatic, juicy and tangy, and smells of summer.

Generally, I make it as an ordinary 2 crust pie. As you can see, I am not a particularly gifted hand at the lattice crust. I tend to cut crooked strips, and panic when they break while I'm setting them up. Still, I'll never get better at it without some practice, and I do think the colorful filling deserves a bit of showing off. I generally make more crust than I really need for a double-crusted pie, so that I can cover up mistakes by patching, and don't have to roll everything out just so. I like to use some real lard in a crust, but when I don't have any of the real stuff, I use a combination of butter and crisco. I start with 3 cups of flour, which would theoretically make a 10" double crust pie, but my pan is 9 inches.I just make little cinnamon-sugar thingies with the leftover dough. They are nice with ice cream. This pie crust (which is pretty much a standard fruit pie crust for me) has:

It's made in the usual way in the food processor: Dry ingredients are fluffed up. Then the butter and crisco are cut into small squares and added, and the contents pulsed until the over-all texture is mealy. The egg yolk and lemon are pulsed in, and ice water added through the tube while it runs, just until the whole thing comes together. A hour is usually enough chilling time to roll them out.

The filling has:
6 nectarines, sliced-no need to peel them, but if using peaches, you must peel
pint blueberries
2/3 cup sugar
3 tbsps cornstarch (I don't like to use so much thickening, but this is a very damp filling.)
squirt each orange juice and lime juice
sprinkle each cinnamon, nutmeg

It is dotted with butter. Because the filling can be so moist, I generally sprinkle some fine dry breadcrumbs on the bottom crust before pouring it in. I may be deluding myself, but I think it keeps the bottom crust from extreme sogginess. This pie has a light egg glaze with a sprinkling of coarse sanding sugar on top for color and a little crunchiness. Obviously, these last are entirely optional.

June 25, 2006

I have gone on at some length about my regard for the late Mireielle Johnston, and her wonderful cookbook, Cuisine of the Sun. More than a few of my most reliable and well loved recipes came from this collection of "Classical French Recipes from Nice and Provence," which appeared in my life in the late seventies. It was, to me, a key to a whole world of distinctive, delicious and unpretentious food. No doubt the recipes are classic, but they were also chosen, refined and executed by a brilliant home cook, and very clever lady. I was pretty much never disappointed when I trusted her judgment.

There was not much in this book I hadn't tried or considered in one form or another, but there was one unusual dessert I never got around to making. She called it,"one of the most traditional and well-loved desserts of Nice", but also a "curious blend". The tourte de blettes always seemed odd, including as it does spinach or chard, and cheese in a sweet pie. I had been curious to try it, but shy of commiting time and ingredients to something I might well not like. Now that I had a farmbox, with plenty of spinach and chard, some pine nuts I got for a gift, and the blog to encourage me experiment, it seemed like a good time to give it a try.

The ingredients are these:
(BTW MJ says this serves eight. This borders on the hysterical. I would say it serves at least 12, and I am known for my greed.)

Digression: It's about those golden delicious apples. I know they are horrible eaten out of hand, a travesty of an apple-the texture is mealy and the flavor insipid; the skin is unusually tough. Crispness, one of the most essential qualities of an eating apple, is pretty much entirely absent. (Caveat: I have never had one freshly picked, usually any apple right off the tree is a thousand times improved from a storage apple.) I assumed, from sampling it, that the golden delicious was bred for storage and transport, and regularly ignored for years directions to use them in cooking. I just substituted something I knew to be a reasonable cooking apple.

I had vaguely remembered a dispute reported in the early days of common marketdom, in which the many fabulous varieties of English apple were seen as threatened by a French proposal to recognize fewer varieties. Since most of the recipes including the golden delicious were French, I guess I just thought that the poor dears didn't have good cooking apples to choose from, or some foolishness of that kind. I may have even been pompous on the topic-it seems likely. I'm here to tell you that this was a Serious Error. In turns out that somehow, in cooking, the golden delicious is magically transformed. It softens, while keeping its shape, and the sugars condense, or something, resulting in an almost flowery, carmelized yumminess. End of digression, I think.

Pastry:On a floured surface, work the ingredients together until well blended, stretching the dough away from you with the heel of your hand. Shape into two balls, one 2/3 and the other 1/3 of the total dough. Cover with a clean nonterry dish cloth, and leave 2 hours at room temperature.Tourte:Peel the apples and cut 2 in small cubes. Put the raisins and rum in a little pan. Boil and then simmer 2 minutes. Preheat oven to 425F. Mix the greens, raisins, apple cubes, pine nuts, sugar, cheese, lemon rind and eggs, in abig bowl. Slice the remaining apples. Roll the pastry out thinly. Butter a deeper than ordinary pie dish, casserole or mold, and spread the larger circle of dough in the bottom, up the sides, and over the edges of the baking dish. Prick it all over with a fork. Heat the jelly and brush it over the bottom and sides of the crust. Add the filling, and cover with the apple slices.

Cover with remaining circle of dough, and trim neatly. Poke the top crust with a fork, and bake 15 minutes. Turn heat to 325F, and continue to bake until golden- approximately 45 minutes more. (It should be a darker gold than appears in the pictures, which are washed out by sunshine and an inept photographer-me.) Sprinkle with confectioner's sugar. I snuck mine out of the pan, because it was an old beat up metal one, but if you make it in a pretty baking dish, you won't have to upend it.This may be eaten, said Ms. Johnston, warm or cold, and is especially suited to buffets and picnics.

I would agree. I was surprised by the taste. It is simultaneously a very individual flavor and not weird. Not a sharp taste at all, neither the greens nor the cheese stand out. If any taste dominates, it is the apple, but just barely. It's all kind of mellow, taste-wise, in the manner of a custardy sort of thing, though an entirely different texture. It is quite solid, but soft, not chewy- just sort of densely packed. Unlike a ricotta kind of pie, it is not prone to collapse. It is easy to slice, hence good for picnics and buffets- or to take sliced, in a lunchbag. It goes extremely well with strong hot coffee. I'm in favor, and glad I tried it. I'm thinking of making some for company. Meantime, I've got a lunchbag treat for the week. I might pre-bake the bottom crust a little next time.